


kissed the girls and made them cry

by Spudato



Series: The First Sentinel AU [2]
Category: Fallout - Fandom, Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: First Sentinel AU, Other, Sarah Lives AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25726987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spudato/pseuds/Spudato
Summary: It’s a quiet conclusion that she reaches when she’s hidden away in her room one night, looking through old Pre-War magazines and staring at pages of pretty ladies all smiling perfectly in a permanent stasis, and she knows there must be something happening here. So, maybe she’s gay. Maybe that’s it.Sarah's never found a word for herself that feels right. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it feels like it should. She'll figure it out eventually, though; she's a Lyons. It's what they do best.
Relationships: Lone Wanderer/Sarah Lyons
Series: The First Sentinel AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766890
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	kissed the girls and made them cry

**Author's Note:**

> **A small note:** I remember going on Elder Lyons's terminal in Fallout 3 and seeing that entry about Sarah needing a "pretty" birthday gift because she's _forgotten she's a woman_ and when I tell you I screamed... anyway. Sarah's queer. And non-binary! Here's a fic about her figuring that out. Sarah's pronouns are she/her, Rookie's pronouns are they/them.

Sarah must be about twelve years old when she first sees a pretty woman and goes _oh, wow._

To elaborate; it’s not the first time she’s seen _a_ pretty woman in, like, general. She’s seen a lot! And by the time she’s twelve, she’s certainly seen her fair share of them, given most Brotherhood soldiers maintain very rigorous workout routines and almost all pack enough muscle to show it off. The key difference here is that, before then, she’d seen them all as any other adult or older teen — caretakers, really, who would chase her about the halls of the Citadel when their superiors weren’t paying attention. After that realisation, though? Well, Sarah quickly discovers that she stares at the women with a certain flush to her cheeks that she doesn’t seem to get when she looks at any of the guys who stand around flexing, and whilst she doesn’t look particularly far into it at the time — she’s basically a kid, ‘cmon, she’s got homework to do and comics to be reading — she certainly starts paying attention to it the older she gets. It’s just _there,_ lingering every time she looks too long at the way the other girls roll their necks and muscled shoulders, or tighten their abs up during a workout, or smile at her when they catch her watching…

Sarah figures out she’s probably gay by the time she’s fifteen. Maybe. It’s a quiet conclusion that she reaches when she’s hidden away in her room one night, looking through old Pre-War magazines and staring at pages of pretty ladies all smiling perfectly in a permanent stasis, and she knows there _must_ be something happening here. So, maybe she’s gay. Maybe that’s it.

It gets a little easier after that, and also _doesn’t,_ in a funny sort of way. Sarah kind of blurts it out one day by accident, when one of the younger male Initiates starts angling after her, constantly mentioning about going on _dates_ and talking of _getting to know each other_ (though as to exactly _where_ they’d go on said dates, however, seems to escape him, and Sarah very nearly says yes on more than one occasion just to see how he puzzles it out), and eventually she sighs and just looks at him and goes “Sorry, I’m gay.”

There’s a long and pregnant pause that follows, before several of her friends — well, _maybe_ friends, because some just hang out near Sarah’s vicinity because they know just how important she’s going to be someday, because they want into her inner circle that, truthfully, hadn’t even existed at the time — give each other long and knowing looks moments before they burst into laughter, shoving at the Initiate’s shoulder roughly, playfully, in the way only teenage soldiers can be.

 _“Idiot,”_ one of them admonishes breathlessly, smiling wide. “Couldn’t you _tell?”_

He blushes and stutters and fidgets and flees the scene, and whilst Sarah stands there wondering what _that_ was supposed to mean — was it that obvious to everyone else? — all the girls nearby suddenly have different looks on their faces, eyeing Sarah up like they’re all on a whole new playing field.

Perhaps they are, now.

But word of it gets back to her father only a few days after, working through the ranks at a surprising pace, and so when she’s called into his bedroom in the Solar it’s the first time Sarah feels _nervous_ about it. Her father’s not an intolerant man — or rather, only ever in specific circumstances — but that knowledge doesn’t help quell the twinge of anxiety that sits in her gut when she comes in to find him sitting at his terminal with a look of… well, actually, she’s not entirely sure _what_ look he’s got on his face. She’s never seen it before in her life.

He waves a hand towards one of the seats behind him, and she slinks across the room to sit down in it, her muscles aching from a new training regime that saps her energy like nothing she’s ever done before, accompanied by the familiar throb of growing pains. She’s growing taller, now, limbs becoming long and wiry with new muscle, and the seat no longer feels quite as big as it did a few years ago. Now, it’s almost a little too small.

Her father takes a moment to breathe, setting his face into something blank and unreadable as she settles down, and when he speaks his voice is low, quiet.

“There’s been some… _rumours_ about the Citadel, Sarah,” he begins, all grave in a way that makes her squirm. “Rumours I’d much rather hear the truth of right from the source, rather than passed about the ranks.”

Sarah frowns. She’s not sure why anyone’s been discussing it at all, really, when it’s her business and not theirs… but the Citadel is painfully small, to be frank. It’s easy to overhear what you shouldn’t. “Is it about what I said to that Initiate?”

Her father rarely shrugs, but he does so now. “I don’t know the context, but I’m more curious to hear if what you said is true. Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Even though Sarah is pretty sure they’re talking about the gay thing, part of her wonders if maybe he’s actually talking about something else entirely. Two days ago, Sarah had called one of the other Initiates in the bailey a _bitch-faced motherfucker who can’t find his own_ **_fucking_ ** _dick in his own_ **_fucking_ ** _pants_ when he’d singlehandedly ruined a team-building exercise out of sheer ineptitude, and the only reason she’d escaped any real punishment (outside of the mandatory one-hundred pushups for swearing in the bailey) was because she hadn’t laid him out on his ass. Thankfully, Initiate Dusk _did,_ which is why she’s on cleaning duty for the next two weeks. “Why… would I?”

At that, he sighs, leaning back in his creaky old chair with his fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. Maybe they _are_ talking about the swearing thing. “Sarah, I just want you to know that it’s okay if you’re— well, that you’re… gay.”

Oh. It _is_ about the gay thing. “Oh. Okay.”

Her father makes a very long-suffering sort of noise, before he turns himself about in his chair to get a better look at her. She’s never totally sure what he sees; allegedly, she’s almost a spitting image of her mother, what with her blonde hair and green eyes and increasingly taller build, but sometimes he looks at her like there’s something more, and she’s never been quite sure exactly what else.

“I know it may not seem like a big step to make,” he begins, and he talks slowly as if she needs the time to absorb every word. “But… back in Lost Hills, back in California, they didn’t— they _don’t_ particularly, ah… _encourage_ that sort of—” He takes in a short, sharp breath, like he’s about to pull a bullet free of his own flesh. _“Behaviour.”_

Sarah squints, and he actually looks _uncomfortable._ “It was wrong then and it’s wrong now, to be clear. I was just worried that if you were saying that you’re gay, someone who might still be somewhat sympathetic to their ways could... could be cruel to you. And I just want you to know that they’d be wrong.” There’s a murmur that follows that sounds a lot like _and they’d be punished accordingly,_ but Sarah just nods silently, biting at the edge of a thumbnail as she sits and thinks. She hadn’t known that about Lost Hills — her father doesn’t like to talk about it much, ever since they’d been summarily cut loose — but it’d never occurred to her that maybe it wasn’t a _thing_ over there. It’s not like there’s a lot of discussion about it in the Citadel (nobody much cares who you’re fucking so long as you show up to drills on time), but nothing about it had ever seemed very taboo.

“I know,” she says softly, when she notices her father deflating in the wake of his speech, but she can’t quite seem to gather the strength to look him in the eye. “And I don’t care, really. I just— I only told them ‘cause the boys were being…” she trails off _._ _“Annoying.”_

He smiles at that, his face turning all warm and accepting, and Sarah knots her fingers together, rubbing at a smear of grease that’s worked its way into the mosaic of her skin, following all the minute creases.

“Your mother never minded what people thought about her, either,” her father starts, and it’s mumbled in some distant, nostalgic way. “Didn’t want for anyone’s approval. She knew exactly what she was, exactly what she wanted to be, and she was never afraid to chase that.”

She chased it right into an early grave, Sarah thinks, but she doesn’t say that aloud. Turns out the wasteland can easily be just as cruel to people inside power armor as it is to those without. “Yeah. Yeah, well, um. I should, uh… probably get back to training now, or—”

“Oh! No, of course—” Her father slaps his hands on his knees in the universal gesture of _that’s that, then,_ and Sarah stands up, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of the loose trousers she’s been wearing since her last growth spurt, the hems gradually unrolling a centimetre at a time. She’s about to make for the door — and the barracks, and into a dark corner where she can pretend this weird encounter never happened — when her father clears his throat pointedly, and she glances over her shoulder just in time to see his turn back to his terminal, the green glow of the letters catching on his eyes.

“I love you very much, Sarah,” he says, and she flushes hot and red with embarrassment, as all teenagers do.

“Yeah,” she says back. “Love you too.”

* * *

By the time Sarah’s eighteen, calling herself _gay_ is easy. Most people know by now — save for those who really are completely oblivious, of course — and so Sarah finds that the boys are less insistent and the girls are… well, most of the other girls find very little shame in making their interest in her crystal clear, openly admiring her form as they watch her do pull-ups in the bailey, offering to help her bandage wayward scrapes and cuts, and even being so bold as to run their fingertips down the curves of her biceps with dark, pupil-blown eyes.

More than once, when adrenaline runs high and inhibitions find themselves painfully low, Sarah ends up kissing the boldest ones in supply closets or in the corner of the barracks, eager hands working their way down into her pants and vice versa. It’s just so much easier to be this way, easier to lean into it, easier to flirt and wink in a way that makes her admirers giggle. Sometimes, one of the boys (though they’ll call themselves _men_ like it means anything, as if it’ll have any real impact on their first missions outside the safety of the Citadel's walls) will joke crudely about Sarah needing to try a _real ride,_ but her response generally comes in the form of challenging them to spars and wailing on them until they tap out, punching humiliation into their skin in the shape of fist-sized bruises, and that seems to staunch the worst of that sort of stuff.

So, maybe that should be the end of it. Maybe that should just be that. Maybe Sarah should just be gay and kiss girls and beat up all the stupid boys and maybe that should be the rest of her life forever.

But part of her knows that’s isn’t really right, and it doesn’t work out like that anyway. Things in her life rarely do.

* * *

The rookie is cute.

Sarah thinks it, almost unconsciously, after the fight with the behemoth just outside of GNR. She’s tired after a full day of missteps and mistakes, of delays and false hopes, of watching two potential Pride members lose their lives in a fight they weren’t even supposed to _be_ in and couldn't possibly have been prepared for, and seeing some little upstart civilian ruin the fragments of an ambush she’d scraped together at the last possible second had really been the final nail in the coffin for her patience.

But her frustration didn’t last, not when the kid had helped them take down the hulking, muscle-for-brains behemoth with a few well-placed shots of a Fat Man — made all the more impressive by the fact that the weapon was nearly twice their size, for fuck’s sake — and so when they’d all shuffled inside one by one after counting up the casualties of battle, Sarah had steeled herself, put her aimless irritation aside, and said _thank you._ It was only good manners; after all, she’d honestly fully prepared herself to see this civilian get reduced into bite-sized chunks of meat, or get tossed into a smear across the ruins. Wouldn’t be the first time.

The kid looks up to her with wide eyes when she says it, all owlish and surprised like she’s grown a second head in the five minutes it took her to get inside, and compared to the glare of sheer anger they’d had when they’d traversed the ruins over towards the Pride — their face like a storm, eyes and mouth scrunched up into a scowl that could flay the skin off a lesser woman — it’s looking considerably more like they’re practically a _child._ Seriously, part of Sarah is mildly concerned she’d just entrusted a ten year old with one of the most dangerous weapons in the entire D.C. area, and also probably across all of the ruins of what-once-was _America._

“You’re welcome?” they say, and it seems to come out like a habit, lilting up at the end with bemusement. “Sorry about, uh, your ambush, or whatever. Didn’t realise there was anyone even around, and it’s kinda my first time here.”

Civilians very rarely venture into the remains of D.C. proper, and with good reason not to; the muties have strung up enough body parts like Christmas ornaments to make the repercussions of underpreparedness exceedingly clear to most. Not that it’s stopped this one, of course. That said, Sarah eyes their Pip-Boy on one arm — battered and well-used but fitting with a familiarity that says it’s long-worn, too — and wonders if this one’s fresh out of a Vault sardine tin, which makes it even more remarkable that they’re still alive to begin with. “It’s… fine. I wouldn’t be in charge if I couldn’t adapt to changes of plans. Still, it helps that you did pretty alright out there for yourself, rookie.”

The term of endearment slips out a little too easily, too casually; had any of the Pride been lingering close enough to hear it, it’d have absolutely given away the fact that she’d actually been sort of _impressed_ by the kid, considering it’s a term she mostly only uses on the Initiates who’ve really stuck out to her — the kind worth fostering a relationship with for out on the field. She bites down on her tongue the second she hears the word in her own ears, but it’s already too late, the kid raising a brow as they glance up to her from under the peak of a weathered red cap.

 _“Rookie,_ huh?”

The power armour means that Sarah can’t really pull off a cool and casual shrug to make it clear she’s not panicking about it, not at _all,_ but she tries anyway, wincing when things grind together in a way they really shouldn’t be. “Yeah, well. If you’ve got a name, I’d be happy to use that instead.”

They take a second to think about it, reaching over to adjust where they’ve got their baseball bat slung across their back from hip to shoulder (an old, wooden thing that looks like it’ll snap across the next well-struck skull, to be frank, no matter how well it served them outside when they went for the kneecaps). They carry a Chinese assault rifle, too, settled over their right shoulder to provide them some range in combat, though Sarah’s gaze lingers there only a second before the civilian bites down on their bottom lip, chewing thoughtfully. “You’re… Sentinel Lyons, right?”

Sarah blinks. “Yes. Sentinel Sarah Lyons, squad commander of Lyon’s Pride. You can call me _Sentinel_ for all intents and purposes, though, since I’m the only one with that rank here.”

She’s the only one with that rank _anywhere,_ actually, but she’s not going to say that part. There’s already been enough grumbling from people about her getting a whole rank just to seat her squarely under her father, no matter how hard she’s worked to prove she’s worthy of it. Still, the kid doesn’t question it, nodding slowly before they stick out a hand without much fanfare, their palm recently calloused in a way that suggests that they’re new to the heft of weaponry in their hands, if Sarah’s gauging all the clues right. “Cool. Sentinel Lyons. I’m Rookie Reeves.”

It’s Sarah’s turn to raise an eyebrow now, even as she takes their hand — careful not to crush fragile bones with fingers of steel and wire. “What, got a bounty on your head you don’t want me to know about?”

The kid— _Rookie_ shrugs, and their smile comes easy and bright. “It’s as good a name as any, and since we’re throwing all these ranks around, I might as well join in, right?”

It’s immeasurably cheeky of them (even if, in any other context than this, their performance would have led to a field promotion to Initiate at the very minimum), but Sarah finds herself smiling anyway, searching for some fun and witty quip to toss back when there’s noise through the open door into the studios, Three Dog’s brash laughter loud enough to sound right off the walls. Rookie’s face sort of drops, their good humour dissipating, and they tug their hat a little further down their brow, shielding their eyes from view.

“I should go talk to, uh, Three Dog,” they murmur, shoving their hands into the pockets of their Pre-War leather varsity jacket. “I’m looking for someone, and apparently he probably knows where they’re at.”

Three Dog _does_ have an ear for miraculously knowing about things no matter how far away they may be, so if anyone knows anything about a missing person, Sarah would lay her money on him every time. So, she gives a stern nod of acknowledgement, and swallows down the instinct to say _dismissed_ because she said they didn’t have space for more recruits and she _meant_ it, no matter how good they are in combat under duress. “Good luck.”

Rookie makes a noise that sounds like _thanks_ before they turn on their heel to make their way out towards the studios, Three Dog’s voice echoing through the building as he excitedly recaps the day’s events to himself like he’s preparing to go on air right this very second. Sarah watches the kid head around the corner and out of her sight, their shoulders hunched and pace clipped, and she takes a moment to breathe in stagnant, smoky air, letting the distant recounting organise her mind for her. She gets about as far as recalling her miserable excuse for an ambush when, in that very same moment, something traitorous in her brain says _the rookie’s pretty cute, though,_ and she curses aloud at the very thought. She has better things to be doing than thinking about little androgynous wastelanders, no matter how round their face is or how big their eyes are. Honestly. She’s a mess.

Her resolve lasts about… twenty minutes, tops, crumbling apart when the kid comes striding out of the studios with that same stormy look from earlier, not even paying attention to Sarah, to the Pride, to any of the soldiers stationed around, as they thunder down the stairs towards the door. Sarah’s talking to Vargas downstairs — having hopped out of her power armour to give her legs a proper stretch, trying to give him a poor attempt at a pep-talk after such a disastrous day (she’s much better with actions over words, and judging from the look on his face, it’s true even now) — and she glances over her shoulder to watch Rookie swing the door open wide before they slam it shut with such force that it shakes the walls, and the pair share a glance before she pats Vargas on the shoulder apologetically, moving towards the bottom of the stairs.

“I’ll go find out what _that_ was about,” she says, jabbing a thumb over to the front door, and Vargas gives her a look that says _better you than me._ Which is fair. For a man devoted to blasting the truth, Three Dog can be a little frustratingly roundabout at the worst of times. So, she squares her shoulders before retracing Rookie’s steps towards the studios, heading up onto the mezzanine and through the rear door, and she doesn’t bother to announce her presence to the DJ upstairs; she’s been helping to defend this place for long enough to have earned right-of-way. He can’t complain.

Upstairs, Three Dog is sat at his broadcasting station, the old ‘ON AIR’ light that hangs from the ceiling turned off for the first time in a long while, and he’s staring down at a pile of holotapes with the names of artists scrawled on them in faded ink, weighing up which song is going to get first dibs on being broadcast. He doesn’t look up as she climbs the stairs, nor does he move when she pointedly clears her throat, entirely focused up until the point she actually speaks. “Three Dog?”

He jerks upright at that, peering over his shoulder like he’s expecting Rookie to come marching back in, but he grins wide at the sight of Sarah instead. “Sarah! Oh, my _champion_ of the Good Fight! How’s it going for my favourite tin-can?”

“Decently enough,” she says as she crosses her arm over her chest, glancing away as she tries to pick a bit of dirt out from under her well-chewed nails. “Mind telling me what got that kid in such a mood, though?”

It seems to take him a second to make the connection between the _kid_ and Rookie, but when the dots join together he just shrugs, his infectious energy dimming if only for a moment. “Ah, just a conflict of interests, you know how it goes. They want somethin’ and I want somethin’, so we made a sweet deal… though, I think they were hoping I’d just give ‘em what they wanted from the get-go, yeah?”

“Roping another hapless soul into your _good fight?”_ It comes out sounding dryer than she’d intended, if only because she, herself, struggles to really engage with the whole philosophy. It’s easy to call it that when you sit in a radio station all day, yammering joy to the people whilst soldiers watch your doors, but when the gun’s in your hand and the difference between life and death comes down to a sliver of chance, a _good_ fight often just turns into a _fight,_ plain and simple.

“Please. Information isn’t free out here, you know that as well as I do,” he counters, leaning back in his chair until it creaks ominously. “And since your army don’t got the resources to help me out, I figured I’d take the opportunity to get my back scratched where I could get it.”

Sarah blinks, and the cold sensation of an unsettling realisation runs right up her spine, settling at the base of her skull and lingering there like the tip of a knife. “What’d you ask for?”

There’s a long moment where he seems to be contemplating his answer, and then, he turns in his seat, facing away from her just in time for his little revelation to drop. “I told ‘em I’d tell them everything they wanted to know and then some… _if_ they grabbed that replacement dish from the Museum of Technology and stuck it up on the memorial.”

It takes an _awful_ lot of strength — almost more than Sarah possesses — to not leap across the room and throttle Three Dog by the collar of his jacket, but she instead manages to settle for uttering a single, guttural _what._ “You sent them _there? Alone?!”_ She pauses, the implications piling up in her mind, and the next sentence comes out with a roar. “That place is a mutant hive that’s chewed up stronger soldiers than them! Shit, my own _Pride_ would be outmatched in that hellhole, what the _fuck?”_

Infuriatingly, he just laughs. “Trust me, Sentinel. With what they’re after? Ain’t nothing on this scorched earth that can get between _them_ and _it.”_

That isn’t the point and he knows it; the only reason the Pride hasn’t yet marched in on the place to retrieve the dish themselves is because it’s an operation that’ll need at least three squads to take on if they’re to have any chance of surviving the encounter, but these days the Brotherhood is spread thinner than ever before. Technically, Sarah’s supposed to be in three different places at once right now, and it’s only because the situation here at GNR was getting so decidedly dicey that the Pride was sent here in the first place. Three Dog’s vented his displeasure at the whole shitty signal situation more times than Sarah can be bothered counting, but there’s nothing to really be done — so long as he isn’t _dead,_ a shoddy signal was being considered acceptable collateral damage, at least for the time being. But sending some kid with little more than a baseball bat and assault rifle, _alone,_ into that hellhole? They’re already dead in the water.

“When they die, that’s on _you,”_ is what she says instead of all that, and anger boils in her gut, hot and acrid and searing. “When my team gets sent in there, we’re gonna find their remains smeared on the ground like a fucking ink blot, and you’ll have to answer for it.”

Save for a single twitch on his brow, Three Dog doesn’t look half as bothered about it as he should be, and it makes Sarah even angrier. Rookie’s some Vault kid who clearly doesn’t know the risks, can’t assess the threats, and Sarah can’t even be sure if they’ll make it as far as the goddamn front doors without backup. Yet, as much as she wants to abandon her post and make chase, she can’t, and thinking of an incident like Reddin happening all over again makes her grit her teeth until it hurts right along her jawline.

“I’m sure I will,” Three Dog says when the silence grows too thick. “But I won’t. They’ll be back safe and sound, baby. Just you wait and see.”

Sarah doesn’t believe it for even a second, and she thinks it’s a shame; they might have made a good Initiate _(and they were very cute,_ her brain can’t help but think) but she knows she won’t be seeing Rookie again.

* * *

This isn’t true, because — true to Three Dog’s word — they _do_ survive, which is a fact Sarah only finds out after she’s left GNR and made her way back home to the Citadel, heading over to the barracks for a very short and well-deserved nap only to hear the DJ yelping out, loud and clear and obnoxiously so, that _you can’t stop the signal, baby._ She blinks, once or twice, decides she’s hallucinating, and goes to sleep for a scant few hours, but when she wakes up she finds out that a recon team poked around after reports of an extended firefight inside, and now the museum of technology is full of bullet holes and mutie corpses and there’s a shiny new dish on the side of the memorial that wasn’t there just over six hours ago.

 _We’ve got too many local conscripts as it is,_ she recalls herself saying, and the memory gives her a headache as she wonders if maybe she _should’ve_ recruited them then and there. Clearly, there’s something brewing under their skin that’s proving to weaponise quite well, but she doesn’t let the error in her judgement slip; if they ever meet again, she’ll make good to at least extend the offer.

And they do meet again, eventually. They meet under a lot of circumstances, be they good or regretful. They meet after Rookie’s father dies in vain to stop the Enclave, and they meet again to take the purifier back. They meet again, though a haze of drugs and radiation, in the clinic of the Citadel, and they meet in the vertibird as they watch Adams go up in flames together, cheering as they see an enemy who took so much fall so far. They meet when Sarah nearly dies in a coup that destroys the foundations she stands on, dragging herself to Rookie’s door, and they meet in the ruins of Boston, years later, when Rookie throws themself into her arms with a shout of laughter, pressing kisses to her mouth over and over and over again.

It’s not easy being Sarah, but whatever this is, _is._ Even after everything’s different.

* * *

One day, when they’re staying the night in a little settlement on a coastal peninsula called Nordhagen Beach, Sarah regales Rookie with the story of figuring out she wasn’t straight. They laugh at all the right times — when she was ogling the older women, looking through magazines to stare at the models, telling that Initiate she was gay without really meaning to, the awkward conversation with her dad — and hum with agreement all the others, but once Sarah’s done, her smile fades, and as she listens to the steady sound of the tides and the crackling of the barrel fire outside, she frowns up at the dilapidated ceiling.

“But, like… I don’t know if _gay_ is… what I am any more? Or… I don’t know if I ever even fit it to begin with, you know?”

Rookie makes a noise of agreement, tucking themself closer to her side to better fit next to her. The only spare bed the Nordhagens could lend to them after they’d helped destroy a handful of new Mirelurk nests nearby was an old and narrow double that Sarah’s wide shoulders hardly fit onto alone, but Rookie doesn’t mind the tight fit. They’ve slept together on narrower bunks than this, and only occasionally does one of them end up on the floor. “I feel you. I went through a ton of different words for how I felt, and settled on ones that _totally_ didn’t fit me for ages, haha. It wasn’t until I went snooping through my dad’s medical books that I found out I could just be _queer.”_

Sarah’s ears prick up at that, and she turns her head just enough to rest her chin on Rookie’s head of curly hair. It’s growing long again, and once they get back to Diamond City, they’re long overdue for a haircut. “Queer?”

“Yeah,” they murmur, snaking an arm across Sarah’s waist. “I knew I was, like, genderless. Non-binary. Knew that for ages. But it meant I wasn’t _straight_ ‘cause I wasn’t a guy, and I wasn’t a lesbian ‘cause I wasn’t a girl… wasn’t gay ‘cause, again, not a guy!” They laugh, and it’s soft and sleepy. “But queer is just... queer. Don’t have to explain it. It can mean anything I want it to.”

That sounds nice. Sarah’s too used to _titles_ — too used to names and ranks and identifiers weighing her down rather than setting her free, following her since the day she was born and forever nipping at her heels — but she’s been taking the time to figure out a lot about herself lately. Ever since meeting Rookie she’s realised that she’s not a woman, though she’s not entirely sure by what percentage (Rookie says it’s okay for it to be whatever percentage she wants it to be, and it’s a lot of power to hold over herself, funnily enough), and since Rookie’s not a girl, she’s not entirely sure what they _are._ But being gay never felt right, and being a woman never sat right either, and so Sarah’s come to the only conclusion she’s got: she’s just happy to be here. That feels like enough.

“Queer,” she repeats, softly, and Rookie makes a hum that sounds more like a snore. “Yeah. _Queer._ I like that.”

When Sarah finally dozes off, she dreams. She dreams of her mother — the one who never minded what people thought about her, who knew exactly what she was, who she wanted to be. She watches her laugh loud and bright, with her mane of golden hair and shining green eyes, as she watches an endless sea stretch on before her, hands pressing shapes into the salt-wet sand, watching the world turn.

It’s only when Sarah wakes up to a pale orange dawn, with Rookie sprawled over her and drooling on her shoulder, with the tide outside rushing back and forth, that she realises it wasn’t her mother she was seeing.

It was herself, right here. Exactly as she’s supposed to be.


End file.
